The Belles of St Trinians (PG.)
Directed by Frank Launder. Starring Alistair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Beryl Reid. 1956. Black and white. 91 mins.
The DVD, Blu-ray release by Studiocanal of the first St Trinian’s film marks its 60th anniversary. (Sims’s An Inspector Calls has also been re-released.) As a child St Trinian’s films were the waste of many a rainy (and quite a few balmy) summer holiday afternoon and now, something less than 60 years on, the first instalment really does look like a classic of British cinema.
Based on the cartoons of Ronald Searle, the girls of the notorious girl’s boarding school are divided up into two distinct camps. The prepubescent girls of the fourth form are an amorphous destructive shoal, a group consciousness whose unity is such that it is impossible for an authority, from teacher to the police, to control. The stocking-clad dolly birds of the sixth form are equally unruly but less savage. Here are the antecedents of our modern day feral youth but though they seem to provoke genuine terror in all they face, the film always has their sympathies. The girls confirm all those male fears about what happens when ladies, those frail gentle creatures, are allowed to congregate in groups of four or more.
The conventional wisdom is that from this high watermark the series went downhill. This is the certainly true (although as a youth I was a big fan of The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery) but even this first instalment is a fairly broad comedy. The daughter of an Arab Sheik arrives at the school bearing pocket money of £100 and access to her father’s racehorse, Arab Boy, who is a certainty for the Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
The pleasure of the Belles of St Trinian’s is much the same as the Carry Ons: watching superb performers create magic from material that doesn’t really contain much. Three performances really stand out. Sim is masterly in the dual role of headmistress Millicent Fritton and bookmaker brother Clarence. Nobody ever took to drag with Sims’s mixture of disdain and yet total comfort. Both the Frittons are thoroughly dishonest, yet somehow aghast at how disreputable they have become. They embody the film’s theme that something in the British character was permanently lost during the war; that we emerged as a nation of spivs and chancers.
In any other film Joyce Grenfell, playing a police officer sent in undercover to spy on the school by the sergeant, who is also her long term, non committal fiancé, might break your heart. She is full of hope and decency, a thoroughly good egg. Her bounding walk expresses an optimism that is doomed to be frustrated. What a gem. After a schoolgirl has told her to nark it her delivery of the line, “No, I shall not nark it,” is a moment to lock away and treasure forever.
Best of all though is George Cole as Flash Harry, a wideboy and black marketer who assists the girls in their dealings. Cole was effectively creating a career long vehicle for himself, a model that could be shifted into Arthur Daley when these films finished. His Harry is shifty but honourable and strangely deferent and admiring in his scenes with Miss Fritton. “What a Dame,” he exclaims when she enquiries about the practicalities of wagering the entire school funds on a race horse. He is a perfect physical creation from the masterly way he manoeuvres the angle of his hat over his eyes to his sidling walk, the origin source surely of the Hofmeister Follow-The-Bear saunter.
There is a moment when he emerges from the bushes near the school, summoned by a whistle with hat angled low over his eyes and saunters past Miss Fritton, accompanied by his own hurdy-gurdy theme, complete with Have-A-Banana, which is surely one of the great moments of British cinema.
Extras
Interviews and a lot of them. Sim’s daughter speaks about her father, there is a feature catching up on some of the girls that were in the film and three different interviews with film historians and lecturer types. These are generally informative but maybe some effort could’ve been made to stop them covering the same ground. The first time you hear that Searle’s cartoons were inspired by his experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war it is fascinating; less so
Directed by Frank Launder. Starring Alistair Sim, Joyce Grenfell, George Cole, Beryl Reid. 1956. Black and white. 91 mins.
The DVD, Blu-ray release by Studiocanal of the first St Trinian’s film marks its 60th anniversary. (Sims’s An Inspector Calls has also been re-released.) As a child St Trinian’s films were the waste of many a rainy (and quite a few balmy) summer holiday afternoon and now, something less than 60 years on, the first instalment really does look like a classic of British cinema.
Based on the cartoons of Ronald Searle, the girls of the notorious girl’s boarding school are divided up into two distinct camps. The prepubescent girls of the fourth form are an amorphous destructive shoal, a group consciousness whose unity is such that it is impossible for an authority, from teacher to the police, to control. The stocking-clad dolly birds of the sixth form are equally unruly but less savage. Here are the antecedents of our modern day feral youth but though they seem to provoke genuine terror in all they face, the film always has their sympathies. The girls confirm all those male fears about what happens when ladies, those frail gentle creatures, are allowed to congregate in groups of four or more.
The conventional wisdom is that from this high watermark the series went downhill. This is the certainly true (although as a youth I was a big fan of The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery) but even this first instalment is a fairly broad comedy. The daughter of an Arab Sheik arrives at the school bearing pocket money of £100 and access to her father’s racehorse, Arab Boy, who is a certainty for the Gold Cup at Cheltenham.
The pleasure of the Belles of St Trinian’s is much the same as the Carry Ons: watching superb performers create magic from material that doesn’t really contain much. Three performances really stand out. Sim is masterly in the dual role of headmistress Millicent Fritton and bookmaker brother Clarence. Nobody ever took to drag with Sims’s mixture of disdain and yet total comfort. Both the Frittons are thoroughly dishonest, yet somehow aghast at how disreputable they have become. They embody the film’s theme that something in the British character was permanently lost during the war; that we emerged as a nation of spivs and chancers.
In any other film Joyce Grenfell, playing a police officer sent in undercover to spy on the school by the sergeant, who is also her long term, non committal fiancé, might break your heart. She is full of hope and decency, a thoroughly good egg. Her bounding walk expresses an optimism that is doomed to be frustrated. What a gem. After a schoolgirl has told her to nark it her delivery of the line, “No, I shall not nark it,” is a moment to lock away and treasure forever.
Best of all though is George Cole as Flash Harry, a wideboy and black marketer who assists the girls in their dealings. Cole was effectively creating a career long vehicle for himself, a model that could be shifted into Arthur Daley when these films finished. His Harry is shifty but honourable and strangely deferent and admiring in his scenes with Miss Fritton. “What a Dame,” he exclaims when she enquiries about the practicalities of wagering the entire school funds on a race horse. He is a perfect physical creation from the masterly way he manoeuvres the angle of his hat over his eyes to his sidling walk, the origin source surely of the Hofmeister Follow-The-Bear saunter.
There is a moment when he emerges from the bushes near the school, summoned by a whistle with hat angled low over his eyes and saunters past Miss Fritton, accompanied by his own hurdy-gurdy theme, complete with Have-A-Banana, which is surely one of the great moments of British cinema.
Extras
Interviews and a lot of them. Sim’s daughter speaks about her father, there is a feature catching up on some of the girls that were in the film and three different interviews with film historians and lecturer types. These are generally informative but maybe some effort could’ve been made to stop them covering the same ground. The first time you hear that Searle’s cartoons were inspired by his experiences as a Japanese prisoner of war it is fascinating; less so
